The present invention relates to a map application system and map display control method that are useful for indicating spatial information sequentially where a great amount of spatial information (information related with each place of a map) collected from various information sources exists. In particular, the present invention relates to a map application system and map display control method that can follow a route according to a user's interests inside a virtual space of existing information by determining a stroll route according to the degree of the interest of the user against spatial information and indicating spatial information sorted by the degree of the interest of a user sequentially along a route.
A conventional electronic map information system and car navigation system are described below.
(1) Electronic map information system
In a conventional electronic map information system, it is necessary to show a portion of an area by using a portion of the data of an extensive area. It is important to indicate which position of the overall figure is represented by the area that is being shown due to the limit in the display area that can be shown. One technique to solve the problem is shown in JP-A-6-252324. This figure display apparatus shows the entire figure combined with a partial figure of a detailed area. That is, the entire figure is displayed on a subscreen, and the partial figure is displayed on a main screen. The area that corresponds to an area segmented and shown as a partial figure is indicated on the illustration of the entire figure.
(2) Car navigation system
A car navigation system is one that shows the current position of a car on a map by using satellite information. For example, according to a car navigation system disclosed in JP-A-5-27680, digital map data is stored in a storage medium such as a CD-ROM (compact disc-read only memory) or a FD (flexible disk), a map is displayed on a display such as a CRT (cathode-ray tube) or an LCD (liquid crystal display) on the basis of the stored data, and a current position of a vehicle is determined using a GPS satellite system and shown on the map.
However, by using the conventional position display apparatus, a great amount of labor and a very high cost, on the order of a million dollars, are needed for creation of the map database of a digital map. The main problem is that the map information displayed on a display screen is remarkably less than the commercially available map book, etc., made of paper due to the limitation such as the size and the resolution of a display screen. Therefore, in order to search a position easily and promptly on the map in a map book made of paper, the current position of a concerned vehicle, the page number of the map book, and the progress locus, etc. of the position are displayed on the display screen of a display device.
Conventional electronic map information systems and car navigation systems suffer from the technical problem of not being able to clearly describe information in connection with spatial information such as a map in the display apparatus whose size was limited. There is, in these prior art, a problem that contents cannot be surveyed efficiently on the display device in case large information resources including positional data are integrated and used.